Introduction

The first movies were single, static shots of everyday events. The Lumiere brothers' screening in Paris of a train pulling into the La Ciotat train station caused a sensation. Shot in black and white, and silent, it nevertheless conveyed a gripping reality for the audience. People leaped from their seats to avoid the approaching steam locomotive. The editor's assembly creates a text that, although a new, never-before seen or heard language, is based on a grammatical tradition—one that goes back to Porter and Griffith—that audiences have come to accept as a means for conveying information or telling a story. Editing creates the visual and aural juxtaposition between shots. There are many different ways of doing things in Final Cut Pro (FCP), different ways to edit and to trim, but there are clearly more efficient ways. There are many ways to do things in Final Cut because no one way is correct in every situation.